8 people found this review helpful
Not Recommended
0.0 hrs last two weeks / 1.5 hrs on record
Posted: 9 Jan, 2021 @ 2:15am
Updated: 9 Jan, 2021 @ 2:46am

Early Access Review
Went into this pretty excited, played an hour and then refunded. The tutorial isn't worth the time if you're going for the "2 hour try out." There's a learning curve of maybe 2-3 games. After that you can see that it's the same tile sets squared up against each other in very similar ways... it's not quite as "procedural" as it seems to be. It is interesting that it changes weekly so I can't talk too much junk, it's still very cool that they are going down that avenue.

I didn't like the gunplay, the "time crisis" big yellow stars when you shoot someone makes it hard to see where they are and where they are moving. Weapons also shoot through solid multi-layer metal objects like freezer sides and other large industrial equipment. I understand penetration is a thing but it's not logical or predictable here (at least to me) and that means you have to learn what penetrates what. With procedural maps that's a real problem until you learn every tile of every set with the weapons. Not something I'm willing to do with the state this game is in and something that takes away from the ability to truly create procedural battlegrounds... penetrations should be based on caliber and material/thickness. If it is based on that it doesn't do a good job of making it clear to the player what materials a certain caliber can penetrate or how the ballistics behave. Any type of after action report or "bullet tracing" would help here and that data would certainly be useful for balancing, anti-cheat, and tile creation efforts. Personally I would also compress the damage range to create a lower ttk, though that is entirely my personal preference and may cause weapon balancing issues beyond the balancing issues the weapons currently have.

In terms of what's positive, I really like the pre-battle planning you can do on the map, I like the resource/economy model, and I think that it has some potential in terms of tactical play. Unfortunately the arcade-like aspects take away from that a bit, but I think that's probably part of EA/balance. If they can manage the balancing better this game will be in a really good spot, but I think that will be difficult with constantly evolving maps. If I were the devs (and I'm not, props to them) I'd focus on simulated weapon matchups and some mathematical balancing methods to make sure that weapons shine in actual gameplay environments and behave like they should in regards to the cover materials the player perceives. I didn't once see long range weapons in play and I don't see why they ever would be, the map algorithms just don't support it (tiles are too small for dmrs, snipers, or any semi-auto rifle/carbine).

Overall I think this definitely has a place for a certain group of gamers but it didn't appeal to me in the state it's in now.

It's definitely worth a shot for the two hour refund window... I think a lot of people would really like it, with or without balancing tweaks. With the right balancing I think it could draw a lot MORE people to it, especially if they can do a better job with the procedural component and use things like heat mapping and player metrics to dial in a better algorithm. As someone who works on similar things the algorithms driving the battleground generation and funneling player behavior seem very weak and rudimentary. I still applaud the effort of including this as a core component of the game. With more tiles or even procedural tiles this game could really take off... but that would require significant investment in algorithms and fine turning said algorithms. Consistent ballistic/material behavior is key to being able to generate truly engaging procedural environments.
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